It is not unusual to sustain facial injuries in high impact sports, such as basketball, hockey, baseball, and the like, or during various job-related activities, which expose the face of the user to impact with hard, un-yielding objects. Such objects most often result in damage to soft facial tissue, but can also cause fractures of underlying bones, which brings considerable pain and disfigurement to the injured person and requires extensive subsequent treatment. There is also the potential for damage to the orbital contents and the brain with such injuries.
When such injury is inflicted, it is often through a point or highly localized, which is received by one particular area of the face and is not dissipated throughout the remaining tissues of the face.
Various solutions have been offered to prevent, or at least limit, the force of impact on the face of a sportsman or industrial worker. Such solutions have included providing headgear, such as helmets, with face bars and helmets with outwardly extended shields which are attached to the headgear to protect the facial soft tissues and underlying bony skeleton.
However, in many sports it is inconvenient, if not entirely impossible, to use such helmets, since they impede the movements of the sportsman, interfere with other players, or in some way restrict a sportsman's viewing area.
It is therefore a general object of the present invention to provide a protective headgear, for a sportsman or other person, which protects the facial skeleton and does not have the drawbacks of the prior art.
Some prior patents and patent publications, which are considered pertinent to the invention, are outlined below:
______________________________________ U.S. Pat. No. Inventor(s) Issue Date ______________________________________ 3,729,745 Latina 05/01/73 3,787,895 Belvedere 01/29/74 3,934,271 Rhee 01/27/76 3,946,441 Johnson 03/30/76 4,662,005 Grier-Idris 05/05/87 4,847,920 Aileo et al 07/18/89 ______________________________________ Country Patent No. Inventor(s) Issue Date ______________________________________ Canada 471,265 Marietta 02/06/51 Swiss CH 657 057 A5 Strub 08/15/86 ______________________________________
It is noted that, in the disclosures of the above lists, only Rhee and Johnson mention the absorption of energy and both do so only in regard to helmets, a situation in which the headgear is of a uniform, curved shape, while the face has a variable, relatively complex topography with an underlying facial skeleton of variable bone thicknesses and strength. A primary point of the invention is the absorption and dissipation of energy to protect the facial skeleton, with all of its variations, preferably using varying thicknesses of integrally formed, continuous, energy dissipation material contoured to intimately contact and follow in face-to-face engagement the surfaces of the face over particular, selective pans of the facial skeleton. The Johnson safety helmet for vehicular use includes a separate shock liner shaped like an inverted bowl made of molded, viscoelastic (elastomer) thermoset polymer with a blowing agent located under the helmet shell.
The Marietta patent does provides a plastic "foot ball" player's mask with a separate, smoothly curved, concave, inner foam rubber pad of uniform thickness placed under an outer plastic layer to cover the player's face, which padding is not contoured to the face but smoothly curved. As can be seen in FIG. 3, the padding is flat when not smoothly curved around the player's face, rather than contoured in-and-out to intimately follow the complex, curved shape of the face, as in the invention.
With respect to the Strub patent, it only shows one large eye opening. Strub was not trying to prevent damage to the eyes or the face from blunt or penetrating trauma but only to protect them from the wind and cold, two formidable but totally different goals. Thus, Strub does not provide, for example, a more rigid framework over the nose, frontal bones or bony orbital rims, as in the invention.
Aileo mentions the use of polycarbonate for a visor or shield. However, the Aileo visor is moveable and attached with straps or fasteners and is not rigidly held in place to prevent displacement from blunt force, as in the invention. With respect to any suggested combination of the disclosures of Aileo and Strub patents, as noted above, Strub describes his protective mask as including "eye shields" to keep out wind and cold. There is no mention of any protection from blunt or sharp traumas or the desirability of such. Thus, it would not be "obvious" for Strub to use polycarbonate, a shatter-proof, extremely durable material used to protect against blunt and penetrating trauma in the invention. The two situations are completely different.